A clash of rock against stone. Then, they separated.

“We’re fucked!” Olfric shouted.

Two seconds later, another clash.

BOOM!

Rapid skirmishes ending as fast as they began. Back and forth. It was almost like a dance, with sparks akin to flint striking against flint.

Half a second, and another clash.

SNAP!

“We’re totally, irreversibly fucked!” the Bergott heir cursed.

“Olfric, shut the hell up!” Tanya snapped between panting breaths, ducking just in time to dodge as another cannonball came whirling towards him. The creatures were no larger than the average garden-rate, with elongated tails and thick metallic fangs. Their bodies were lined with jagged scales, dense with a rock-like structure.

She hadn’t really seen them coming, what with trying to hide her head under her arms as everything exploded. And now, a gargantuan horde of them had erupted through the floor, and the strange little monsters were overpowering them.

Overpowering her.

She grudgingly admitted that Bergott had a point. They were, in fact, getting fucked.

Their bodies were curled into tiny projectiles, erupting out from the walls at a velocity that defied comprehension and slamming into them from all directions. A part of her marveled at the sheer ease with which these monsters contorted in mid-air, changing trajectories faster than she could blink. Those that missed would bounce over the rocky walls on the other side and try again through a second wave of extreme prejudice.

Zuken’s hastily raised stone walls offered some protection, but only until a second legion smashed into the barrier from the other side, obliterating their defense. And even so, the Banksi’s visage gave nothing away. He looked completely at ease.

She was no expert, but fending off attacks from all sides while keeping a terrified, squealing changeling safe behind his back was surely no easy feat.

Not even for her.

And Olfric, in an effort to remain completely on-brand, was ineffective here with his water torrents. From what she understood, the pressurized water jets were only useful against larger targets like the bear thing from earlier. Even her own wind-blades weren’t optimal for the scenario at hand.

Not that she wasn’t strong enough. Each time one of those things met Ezzeron’s power head-on, they were obliterated.

But what they couldn’t do with quality, they supplemented with sheer quantity.

And it was working.

This wasn’t some attack. It was almost like some demolition experiment happening live. A coordinated attempt by a legion that had a single objective in mind— the complete extermination of her exploration group, and possibly every other adventurer for that matter.

Still, seeing Elena panic and run around for safety against the incoming barrage gave Tanya a reason to grin despite it all. It was poetic, really, that the brunette remained helpless due to the creatures being unaffected by her strange helplessness power. The sight made her inner child happy.

BOOM!

A rock creature ricocheted inches away from her head, deflected away by a timely torrent of water.

Tanya’s hands began to shake. A part of her hated being saved by Olfric of all people, but now was no time to be picky. It didn’t matter how good she was in a fight— mass mattered, especially when said mass was divided into several hundred components bombarding you all over. She was no stranger to fighting, but this was the first time she had several cumulative tons of angry bad guys coming for her. She’d need to up her ante to get out of this one alive. Of course, there was always the option to—

She shook her head.

“AARGH!”

The sudden scream grabbed her attention. Instinctively raising a wall of wind, Tanya took a moment to glance at Olfric, who had dropped down to his knees, holding his testicles in agony. She wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. Such was the curse of having an enemy as an ally.

“Any ideas?” Zuken demanded. “I can’t keep this up forever!”

Tanya bit her lip. As much as she was tempted to shake her head, there was indeed something she could do. A spell of devastating impact, but one she was incredibly reluctant to cast.

“There might be something,” she slowly admitted, adding a new layer of wind to bolster her makeshift defense. A few projectile-creatures were deflected away, though the force of their collisions was nearly enough to throw her off-balance.

“So what’s the issue?” Elena yelled.

“I— well—” Meeting Zuken’s gaze, Tanya made up her mind. “I’ll need you to cover me. Once I cast this, I won't have anything left to spare.”

It wasn’t technically true, but it was accurate for all intents and purposes. If she did use any more power beyond that, she’d be going down a path with lasting repercussions, like losing herself to her— to something that could ensure an even worse death for her compatriots.

“You think this’ll work?” Zuken asked.

“It’s the best chance we’ve got,” Tanya grimly replied.

“Can you keep up the defense for a moment?”

“I’ll do it.” Surprisingly, it was Olfric who replied, still tenderly holding his family jewels. “I can hold off the incoming fray,” he hissed in pain, “but not for long.”

“What has the world come to,” Zuken muttered, before nodding as Olfric took over. Casting a spell in what seemed like a mix of Faecani and Alstridian, the Bergott raised a massive, swirling mandala of water around them as the torrents spun in vicious circles.

The rat-cannons came in and smashed into them.

The barrier shook but held.

“Quick!” Olfric yelled.

Zuken raised both hands towards the heavens, brown concentric rings glowing almost in defiance to the situation they were in. Normally, Banksi would have made an elaborate gesture for his spells, but instead he ignored all that and focused on the effect at hand.

The results, in her opinion, were just as spectacular nonetheless.

The ground shook as the platform beneath her feet rose. Around that rose an immense spherical wall, encapsulating all four of them inside of it. In truth, it wasn’t a single wall, but rather three concentric spheres of increasing diameter that constantly rotated at a uniform velocity. The rats could break through one wall, but they were stopped by the next. And before they could recuperate, they were trapped by gaps lining the rotating spheres and crushed.

Tanya whistled. Apparently, there was more to the Earth element than just gathering dirt and shaping it into weapons after all. “Will it hold?” she asked.

“Let’s put that to the test,” Zuken yelled back as a legion of angry rock-rats slammed into it.

It held. And not only that, but his kami also grabbed the newest intruders and packed them together to reinforce the spinning defense. That wasn’t something you saw every day—

“Hurry up,” Olfric snapped.

…Right. She’d almost forgotten. Clapping her hands together, Tanya got down to business.

While elemental spells were straightforward affairs, the mechanism, magically speaking, through which they were performed sometimes made them rather complicated. It was why she needed defenses and time to prepare.

She had a deal with Zuken. And as quirky as Elena was, Tanya knew the girl well enough to know she didn’t have it in her to stab someone in the back. But Bergott on the other hand… she didn’t know what to think about him anymore. Nor did she even want to speak aloud in his presence, especially when it came to a spell like this.

Words and skills often went hand-in-hand. And that only went double for high-powered skills, whether it was cast through lifeforce or mana. The magic, so to speak, happened inside your head. You needed to picture what you wanted, add in the required esoteric aspects like emotion, then shape the net result by sheer will. Only then would a kami be able to manifest the effect in the world. The entire process meant keeping an awful lot of juice flowing through your brain during the process.

Sometimes enough to damage it.

That was why incantations were so useful. The concept of incanting was to encapsulate a spell and link to a mnemonic device of sorts. When said aloud, it was something that followed a predetermined path for the mana to be shaped and the spell to manifest, taking at least some of the stress off the caster.

There was a reason, after all, why no spiritist worth her salt would practice powerful spells silently.

She was no exception. Normally. But she really didn’t want someone untrustworthy to hear the words.

Raising her hands, Tanya took in a deep breath. Unlike what non-spiritists assumed, being a wind-type didn’t have everything to do with air. ‘Wind’ was more of a blanket term that included a litany of attributes related to the concept of gas.

Fluidity.

Pressure.

Force.

The greater the number of these attributes in use, the closer it was to the fundamental concept of gas and thus easier to manifest. It was when a caster dealt with a single attribute while alienating the rest that a spell became difficult to use.

Like the one she was about to use now.

Concentric circles of white began glowing around her wrists as her spell took form. It was a rather simple shape— an orb, slightly larger than the average boulder. Too large, and the impact could accidentally kill her as well. Too small, and she’d have wasted the effort on a meaningless attempt.

It needed to be just right. Just enough to do the job, and no more.

Fierce winds began to flurry in all directions. As she threw her hands outwards, an orb of something appeared against the wall on the other side of the vast chamber, with winds zooming all around it, keeping it enveloped and restricted from the environment.

After seconds of holding it all in, Tanya finally let it loose.

One moment, there was nothing. And in the next, a wave of pure pressure imploded in all directions. The wall crumbled as massive pieces of rocks and boulders were dragged in, smashing against each other as they were dragged into the vacuum that was the orb. The rat-like monsters futilely tried to escape at first notice, only to be dragged in and crushed.

“Let it go!” Tanya yelled, doing her best to maintain control over her spell. She saw doubt flicker through the Banksi’s eyes, before he steeled himself and let go of his crumbling protective barriers.

Without a moment wasted, it completely shattered, and everything was dragged into the depths of the ever-expanding orb. Every single piece of rock, every leftover residue around them, even the revolving walls— nothing offered the slightest obstruction. The walls and the ceiling had completely caved in, and large craters formed on the floor.

The orb wouldn’t stop until every single thing in their vicinity was annihilated.

Blood dripping from her nose, she grunted as she finally pulled with all her might and ended the spell.

Silence reigned.

Tanya collapsed to the floor, her lungs feeling like liquid fire was poured into them. She wasn’t sure if she’d gotten all the attackers, but the spell had completely drained her. She was now at the bottom of her reserves, and no matter the result, she was out of the fight.

Unless—

No.

Tanya grit her teeth. She hadn’t caved, not in a long time. She wouldn’t do so now.

Besides, the last time she had given in…

No, she mentally repeated, as an icy feeling ran down her spine.

“Hey, you alright?” Zuken asked. Their gazes met, and a reaffirmation was silently exchanged. No, she was not alright. Not in the slightest. But there was no alternative.

“I’ll— I’ll survive.”

“Good,” the Banksi grinned. “Because I doubt this one can do anything else.” He gestured towards their newest ‘ally’. “Bergott, you still kicking?”

“I’ll live,” came a pained groan. “Seriously, what was that?”

Tanya couldn’t help herself. She giggled.

Her chest hurt, she was in pain, but by the gods it felt good.

Zuken shared her infectious mood with a grin. “Do you reckon they’re done for good?” he asked, glancing at the now-demolished warzone.

She followed his gaze. The entire place was in smithereens. Between the destruction by the rock-rats and her own spell, the place looked less like a portion of an anomaly and more like millennia-old ruins. Multiple fractures ran across the floor, and occasionally a fragment or two would tumble from the ceiling onto the floor with a soft crash.

“I’m not sure. Those things… They were different. Others attacked when we intruded their territory, but they came at us with the intent to kill, after that odd screech we heard.”

“I remember that,” Elena said, her face oddly contemplative. “It felt, well, spicy.”

Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose, mentally counting down from ten. Leave it to the changeling to describe a psychic assault in terms of flavor.

“Spicy?” Olfric incredulously asked, looking at Elena as if she were insane.

“Well, it was a bit salty too, which is strange. Anomalies aren’t supposed to feel angry or jealous, right?”

Tanya really didn’t understand her teammate. But tamping down on the urge to question her utterly inconceivable statements, she instead paused. Despite the ringing craziness behind the cryptic statements, she could tell the half-elf’s words held a sliver of truth to them. The psychic assault. The strange noise. The invading army of monsters. And now, these… rats.

“We’re being considered a threat by the anomaly,” she intoned. “These rats aren’t very powerful individually, but as a legion, they are extremely efficient and incredibly dangerous.”

Which, as a whole, was crazy. Even back on her mission with the Blues, the anomaly hadn’t considered such an all-out-assault until they had managed to kill the genius loci— a massive underwater serpent. There was no way any of the tiny monsters they had slain thus far was the one for this place.

So why was the anomaly acting so hostile?

For some reason, Tanya felt like she wasn’t going to like finding out the answer.

“Well,” Zuken clapped his hands, a cheery smile on his face. “I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.” He sent a smile towards Olfric, sharper than the finest sword. “Why don’t you start telling us what you were doing with those monsters that attacked us?”

Olfric gulped, looking around at all three of them before sighing. “They were yokai.”

Tanya shook her head. No, she’d heard him wrong. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be right. There was some mistake. There had to be some mistake.

“What did you say?”

“Yokai,” he repeated quietly. And this time, Tanya’s eyes went wide and round. “They were yokai, and they’re not going to stop until every single Asukan has left this desert for good. One way or another.”